It’s hard to credibly criticize the bankrupt climate change policy of the Canadian Conservative administration when people insist on drawing comparisons to the Tories’ Liberal predecessors.
As the National Post points out today, the bleakness of the Liberal record belies completely the passion of the Liberal rhetoric. It was only after Prime Minister Chretien had deflected and delayed action for almost a decade – only when he began to think of his political legacy – that he suddenly caught the Kyoto spirit. In the meantime, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions had risen unforgivably and Canada’s credibility on the world stage was in relative tatters*.
Now we have a regime that claims it will act sincerely on its promises. That would be good if the Tories indicated even a passing understanding of the seriousness of the issue. It would be good if Environment Minister Rona Ambrose had been doing more than dismissing Canada’s Kyoto promise as irrelevant. So far, all we hear is that the Conservatives are going to invest almost all their energies in air pollution, all but ignoring the gathering CO2 crisis.
Canadians care about climate change and will not accept a climate action policy that is merely “better than what the Liberals were doing.”

* Relative tatters: better than the U.S. and Australia; worse than EVERYbody else.